The following year, North Town put on a production of Doctor Faustus. Two of the boys were" interested in acting" so they got the big parts, Faustus and Mephistopheles. I was given the smaller but crucial role of Lucifer: the Prince of Darkness, the Embodiment of Evil, the Antichrist himself!
I realised, right from the start, that playing Satan gave me a chance to prove myself as a serious, straight actor, but I'm afraid it was a Devil too far. Part of the problem was my tights. Somebody had decided that in order to make my first entrance as terrifying as possible, I should be dressed in starkest black, with a scarlet cloak and tights. Now you know how unmuscular I was, right? My legs were so thin I could have played a flamingo. And yet the director's vision involved putting me, of all people, in black tights. (It was clear to me, even at that young age, that this was a disastrous choice, but what did I know of the theatrical arts? I left it to the experts.)
On the day of the dress rehearsal, I stood in pitch darkness behind some black drapes, waiting for the cue for my entrance, accompanied by a junior boy whose job it was to show me where the gap in the drapes was to be found. Then I heard my cue, the boy parted the curtains, and 1 strode forward to announce:
"I am ... Lu ... cifer!"
Before I had time to open my mouth, however, I was hit by a wall of laughter that shook the building. It wasn't just the tights, of course: it was the idea that this spindly twerp could strike terror into people's hearts, when, instead of frightening the shit out of them, he was more likely to cause them to wet their pants. I'd created an alternative but unintended form of waste disposal.
Thinking quickly, and realising that the situation was lost, I adlibbed:
"I. . . am ... Lu .. dicrous!" Another big laugh.
Later that evening, at the actual performance, things began to go downhill early in the proceedings. I took up my position behind the black drapes, but this time a different boy was standing there, in the darkness. I peered at him.
"Who are you?"
"Tupman. Gould has a music lesson." "So you're parting the drapes for me?" "What?"
"You're parting the drapes? So I can get on stage." "I don't know about that."
"What?! What are you doing here!"
"I don't know, Cleese. He just asked me to stand in for him."
And now I can hear my cue coming up in about ten seconds, so I start groping the drapes in the dark, trying to find the gap myself, desperately grabbing at the pitch-black cloth in search of an opening, as the seconds tick away. And there's my cue! So ... I just walk forward into the drapes and keep trudging onward against the weight of all the velvet cloth that is clinging to me, and the audience start to giggle at the sight of this strange, increasingly large bulge in the backcloth that is, ever more slowly, making its way towards them. The actors step back in alarm - at least I'm frightening someone - and I manage, just, to keep moving so that when I have reached a point about halfway to the front row of the stalls the drapes, at full extension, start sliding back over my head and finally fall back, revealing a strange creature, a lacquered stick-insect apparently in a fright wig, who announces:
"I am Lucifer!"
By which time most of the audience have lost contact with their chairs.
I didn't try straight acting again for another thirty-seven years, when I played Kenneth Branagh's tutor, Dr. Waldman, in his film of Frankenstein. But this time, I was a triumph! I didn't get a single laugh, not even when Robert De Niro stabbed me to death.
John Cleese "So Anyway" (2014)
